Year-End Lists

Book Riot: Best Books of 2025

[see also 2024 • 2023 • 2017]

• A Guardian and a Thief
  Megha Majumdar
• A Marriage at Sea

  A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck
  Sophie Elmhirst
• A Sharp Endless Need
  Marisa Crane
• A Witch's Guide to Magical Innkeeping
  Sangu Mandanna
• Along Came Amor
  Alexis Daria
• Atmosphere
  Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Audition
  Katie Kitamura
• August Lane
  Regina Black
• Automatic Noodle
  Annalee Newitz
• Awakened
  A.E. Osworth
• Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
  Kylie Lee Baker
• Best Woman
  Rose Dommu
• Blob

  A Love Story
  Maggie Su
• Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
  V.E. Schwab
• Cannon
  Lee Lai
• Cults Like Us

  Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America
  Jane Borden
• Death in the Jungle

  Murder, Betrayal, and the Lost Dream of Jonestown
  Candace Fleming
• Deep Cuts
  Holly Brickley
• Don't Trust Fish
  Neil Sharpson
• Down in the Sea of Angels
  Khan Wong
• Flashlight
  Susan Choi
• Harlem Rhapsody
  Victoria Christopher Murray
• Holler

  A Graphic Memoir of Rural Resistance
  Denali Sai Nalamalapu
• I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I'm Trapped in a Rom-Com
  Kimberly Lemming
• Katabasis
  R.F. Kuang
• King of Ashes
  S.A. Cosby
• Lessons in Magic and Disaster
  Charlie Jane Anders
• Lu and Ren’s Guide to Geozoology

  A Graphic Novel
  Angela Hsieh
• Marsha

  The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson
  Tourmaline
• Mother Mary Comes to Me
  Arundhati Roy
• Oathbound
  Tracy Deonn
• Old Soul
  Susan Barker
• On Again, Awkward Again
  Erin Entrada Kelly & Kwame Mbalia
• One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
  Omar El Akkad
• Queer Enlightenments

  A Hidden History of Lovers, Lawbreakers, and Homemakers
  Anthony Delaney
• Rosemary Long Ears
  Susie Ghahremani
• Salt Bones
  Jennifer Givhan
• Searches

  Selfhood in the Digital Age
  Vauhini Vara
• Sky Daddy
  Kate Folk
• So Many Stars

  An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color
  Caro De Robertis
• Startlement

  New and Selected Poems
  Ada Limón
• Stone Yard Devotional
  Charlotte Wood
• Sympathy for Wild Girls

  Stories
  Demree McGhee
• The Bewitching
  Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter
  Stephen Graham Jones
• The Conjuring of America

  Mojos, Mermaids, Medicine, and 400 Years of Black Women’s Magic
  Lindsey Stewart
• The Dry Season

  A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex
  Melissa Febos
• The Entanglement of Rival Wizards
  Sara Raasch
• The Favorites
  Layne Fargo
• The Ghosts of Rome
  Joseph O'Connor
• The Isle in the Silver Sea
  Tasha Suri
• The Leaving Room
  Amber McBride
• The Macabre
  Kosoko Jackson
• The Nine Moons of Han Yu and Luli
  Karina Yan Glaser
• The River Has Roots
  Amal El-Mohtar
• The Scammer
  Tiffany D. Jackson
• The Wilderness
  Angela Flournoy
• This Is the Only Kingdom
  Jaquira Díaz
• This Place Kills Me
  Mariko Tamaki & Nicole Goux
• To the Moon and Back
  Eliana Ramage
• Truth Is
  Hannah V. Sawyerr
• Tusk Love
  Thea Guanzon
• We Do Not Part
  Han Kang
• When the Tides Held the Moon
  Venessa Vida Kelley
• Wild Dark Shore
  Charlotte McConaghy